St Andrew's is an Eco Silver Church

St Andrew’s Church Freckenham became the first church in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich to receive a bronze Eco Church award in February 2018 under the scheme run by A Rocha UK. St Andrew's has subsequently been upgraded to an Silver Eco Church.

The composting lavatory in the churchyard has been twinned with a similar in Myanmar.

St Andrew’s is one of the four rural churches of which Diocesan Environment Officer Revd Canon Sandie Barton is parish priest.

The churchyard in Freckenham has been pretty much untouched by pesticides and weedkillers for generations, and so is perfect for encouraging wildlife. We leave the wild flowers blooming, and we have bird feeders near the church too. We don’t have running water so we save rain in water-butts for people to tend the flowers they place on their loved-ones’ graves. We have installed a ‘green’ waterless loo, which once a year we empty out to produce our own compost, and we have changed our electricity supplier to 100% renewable energy too, which actually cut our bill in half. We’re already thinking about what we can do next as we’d love to work towards our silver and gold awards.